Mr. Burns at this point looked at me with an air of curiosity. I began
to think that my predecessor was a remarkably peculiar old man.

But I had to hear stranger things yet. It came out that this stern,
grim, wind-tanned, rough, sea-salted, taciturn sailor of sixty-five was
not only an artist, but a lover as well. In Haiphong, when they got
there after a course of most unprofitable peregrinations (during which
the ship was nearly lost twice), he got himself, in Mr. Burns' own
words, "mixed up" with some woman. Mr. Burns had had no personal
knowledge of that affair, but positive evidence of it existed in the
shape of a photograph taken in Haiphong. Mr. Burns found it in one of
the drawers in the captain's room.

In due course I, too, saw that amazing human document (I even threw it
overboard later). There he sat, with his hands reposing on his knees,
bald, squat, gray, bristly, recalling a wild boar somehow; and by his
side towered an awful mature, white female with rapacious nostrils and a
cheaply ill-omened stare in her enormous eyes. She was disguised in some
semi-oriental, vulgar, fancy costume. She resembled a low-class medium
or one of those women who tell fortunes by cards for half a crown. And
yet she was striking. A professional sorceress from the slums. It was
incomprehensible. There was something awful in the thought that she was
the last reflection of the world of passion for the fierce soul which
seemed to look at one out of the sardonically savage face of that
old seaman. However, I noticed that she was holding some musical
instrument--guitar or mandoline--in her hand. Perhaps that was the secret
of her sortilege.

For Mr. Burns that photograph explained why the unloaded ship had kept
sweltering at anchor for three weeks in a pestilential hot harbour